


we'll just keep each other (as safe as we can)

by dottie_wan_kenobi



Series: help, i've soulmate ficced again, and i can't stop doing it [13]
Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No PRIDE, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Chase Needs a Hug, Childhood Friends, Color Blindness, Colors, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, My First Work in This Fandom, No Spoilers, Soulmates, Teenagers, hopefully not OOC lol, not very graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 02:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14094603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dottie_wan_kenobi/pseuds/dottie_wan_kenobi
Summary: Gert and Chase find out that they're soulmates at a young age.





	we'll just keep each other (as safe as we can)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Daughter's Run! It's very GertChase.
> 
> So this is a "the one where you only see color once you meet your soulmate(s) (so you don’t know them until you see them), and it goes away when they die" soulmate au, in a world where there is no PRIDE. There aren't any spoilers for any of the episodes here, which is good because my alpha reader, [Cali](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaliHart), hasn't seen it! Yet they still beta'd this for me. thank you <3
> 
> The abuse isn't graphic at all, but it's there throughout. They talk about how Chase gets an injury. Also, Gert was adopted in this AU, aka is not Stacey and Dale's biological child. Amy and the Hernandezes don't die, so Amy is present and Molly and Gert aren't sisters.

Chase is great at making friends. He’s five, and it’s easy — you just ask if they wanna play with you, and on the off chance they say no, there’s usually another kid to ask. He has lots of friends in his kindergarten class. So when his Mom and Dad tell him that all three of them are going to a party with other kids, Chase is excited.

Dad says, “Our friends will be there. If you make us look bad, you will be punished.” Chase knows what that means. The tone alone is enough to have him nod in understanding and shut his mouth.

On the ride over, Chase is quiet. He stares out the window at the sky. It’s the same shade of gray it is when Chase is called inside from the yard to eat dinner. The clouds are white against it, the trees a different shade that barely looks any different. Mom says the sky is blue, the trees tan and green, but Chase has no concept of what those mean. The only colors he knows are black, gray, and white.

By the time they get to the house, Chase isn’t thinking about color anymore. No, he’s thinking about how he should act to make sure he doesn’t punished.

They’re the first family there except for the people who own it, Mr. and Mrs. Wilder and their son Alex, who is four. Chase says _hi, how are you, I’m Chase, I’m five_ , and his best line — _do you wanna play?_

Alex nods and grabs his hand, and off they go to a corner of the room where seemingly every game ever made is sitting, waiting to be played. They, after some bickering, decide on Twister, but they both know it’s better with more kids, so they sit and wait and talk. Alex tells him about things Chase has never heard, like “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and, through hushed giggles, the “bottle of beer” song he heard on a TV show his parents watched. Chase tells him about the “sit down” song in his class and the electric currents his Dad taught him about.

They talk until the next family comes, the Minorus. Mr. and Mrs. are nice, and they have two girls — Amy and Nico. Amy is seven, Nico four. Alex invites them to play Twister, and they both agree. Amy is the one to spin the wheel and tell them who goes where, and she laughs when Nico has to put her right foot on apple, even with her hands on strawberry and grape. Somehow she manages it. Chase ends up falling over first, and they all laugh about it.

It’s really fun, and adding Karolina Dean (who insists on being called Karo) makes it better. Karo is four, too, and she and Nico are instant friends. Chase sticks by Alex, mostly because Amy is so cool he’s scared he’ll stutter and make Dad look bad. Alex stutters from talking too fast, and it’s just easier to play with him.

Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez are next, with their daughter Molly, who is just barely two. She tries to play with them, but is too young to understand, so they stop with Twister. Molly wants to color, so they do. All the coloring books have numbers to show what color is needed where, the crayons all have the numbers on them. Chase colors a turtle and he stays within the lines, and Amy does too with her kitty, but the younger kids are freer with it. Alex uses the right colors but doesn’t stay in the lines with his dog, while Nico does the opposite with her bird. Molly colors in long lines, the wrong colors and nowhere near inside the lines. Her horse ends up looking silly.

The last to get there is Mr. and Mrs. Yorkes and their daughter Gert. It’s short for Gertrude, Mom says. Dad gives him a look that says he’s not to call her Gertrude under any circumstances.

When they get to the house, Gert stands in front of her parents and waits through the introductions like the rest of them had. She looks around and meets everyone’s eyes and when it’s the Stein’s turn, she meets his eyes, too.

It happens in a blink, literally. He looks at her, he blinks, and then suddenly the whole world is different and bright. They stare at each other for a long, long moment.

“Chase!” Dad snaps, and Chase is pulled abruptly from the staring contest. He looks up at Dad, flinched back even though he knows Dad won’t do anything here. “Introduce yourself,” he says, and Chase hears what goes unsaid.

“Sorry!” He swallows, turns back to Gert. “I’m Chase Stein.”

Mrs. Yorkes starts to say something, but Gert says, “I’m Gert.” Then she steps forward and reaches out a hand that Chase takes instinctually. She pulls him away from Dad, closer to her, and asks, “Do you wanna play?”

Chase sorta feels weird, like his stomach hurts and his head hurts and he feels hot but cold everywhere but his hand clasped in hers. “Yes!” He says, anyway.

* * *

Gert stares at Chase. He’s sitting right next to her, coloring a fish, ignoring the numbers. It’s pretty and she wants to look at it forever, because she can see the colors, can see blue and red and purple, which is now officially her favorite color.

But Chase… Chase is her soulmate. Mom and Dad talk about them a lot, since they’re soulmates and they say her birth parents weren’t. She knows that she can only see purple because she met her soulmate, met their — _his_ eyes, and it happened when she met Chase’s. So she looks at him. His hair is lighter than hers, shorter too, and his eyes are brown. He has freckles and moles on his cheeks, and he’s white like Mom and Dad are. Who, by the way, she can now see in full color.

It’s... _amazing_! Suddenly she wants to color, too, make this bear purple and orange even though she knows bears are brown. Brown like Chase’s eyes, like her hair, like the table.

She gets to work, taking the purple from Chase’s pile instead of Amy’s, who sits next to her, and making sure it mostly stays in the lines. She spends a while coloring it, even as Alex and Nico and Karo and Amy decide to play something else. Molly follows after them, stumbling and clutching her elephant.

With all the room now available to them, Gert thinks about moving away. But then she thinks about having him right next to her, and how it eases the ache in her stomach, and doesn’t go anywhere. They sit and color like that for the rest of the night, talking about their favorite cartoons ( _Teen Titans!_ and _Spongebob_ and _Dora The Explorer_ ) and making dogs and cats all the colors they can think of but the ones they’re supposed to.

When it’s time to go, Gert hugs Chase tightly and everything feels right. He hugs back, just as tight. She doesn’t want to let go, but she’s the one to do it when Mr. Stein says, “Chase, let’s go!”

He pulls away too, but leans in to kiss her cheek before he’s hurrying away. He says, “Bye!” over his shoulder, and she says “Bye!” back, and then he’s gone, out the door. Gert can’t help but giggle and wipe at her cheek, which feels hot.

Mom comes over, a smile on her face, and Gert ignores whatever she says to stare at her red hair. Eventually Gert blinks back in, and hears Mom say, “ — don’t you?”

“What?”

“I said, you like him, don’t you?”

Gert nods, because yes she does like him, she likes him a lot, and one day she’s probably going to marry him which is the ultimate sign of liking someone, isn’t it? “Yeah!”

“Well, good! I’m glad you’re making friends, sweetie.” Mom frowns, and says, “You look — doesn’t she look pale, honey?”

Dad comes and crouches down, puts a hand to her forehead. “Looks like she might have a fever, too.” They look at each other for a long moment, and Gert looks between them, waiting for one of them to talk. Dad says, “Let’s get you home, Gert.”

He picks her up, and she waves over his shoulder to the other kids, and then she’s outside too. It’s _so cool_ out there, dark but not like it was when they walked up. She stares around in wonder, even as she’s put in her carseat and the door closes on the grass and sky and wind.

They drive for a while, and Mom asks how Gert feels. Her stomach hurts again, and her head, and she knows she should tell Mom that. But instead she says, “Mom, Chase is my ‘mate.”

Dad coughs, the car swerves, and Mom yelps, “What?”

“Sweetie, why do you think that?” Dad asks, voice high. It makes her laugh.

“I see color! I know he did too, ‘cause he colored wrong. Hey, Mom? I like purple.”

* * *

Chase starts to feel sick again in the car. It had gone away while he sat with Gert, and he’d forgotten about it until they left the Wilder’s.

He doesn’t say anything about it, too scared to make his punishment worse. Dad is angry and he won’t like it if Chase got sick from one of the kids.

The ride is spent looking out the windows, taking in every color he sees. It’s easy to keep quiet, easy to pretend nothing is wrong.

When they get home, Chase is punished. He made Dad look like an idiot with an idiot son. When it’s over, Mom cries, but doesn’t say anything. She tucks him into bed, looks at the stars on his walls and ceiling, and leaves.

Chase manages to fall asleep even though everything hurts, and he dreams in sharp color of Gert.

* * *

Chase is invited over the next day. He can’t come; the only reason Gert knows is because she hears Mom talking over the phone. She seems upset, and Gert watches as she searches through the cabinets.

“Dale! We need kid’s strength tylenol!” Mom turns around and spots Gert, her mouth dropping into a little ‘o’. “Oh, Gert, honey, why are you out of bed?”

“Who was that?”

Mom picks her up, cradling her head and taking her to her room. “It was Mr. Stein. I tried to see if Chase could come over, so you two can feel better, but he’s busy, apparently.”

Gert rests her head on Mom’s shoulder, eyes falling closed. “I want Chase,” she says plainly.

Mom rubs her back and sits down on the bed, ready to set her down and tuck her back in. “I know you do, sweetheart. I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

Chase waits by the door eagerly. Gert is coming, he thinks on repeat. He has a fever, a low one Mom reports, he still feels sick, and his back still hurts from the punishment, but he’s too excited to care.

Because of the glass outer door, Chase sees exactly when the Yorkes pull in. He doesn’t open the door, knowing the rules, and can barely contain his excitement. Gert is let out of the car, and she hurries to the door. Chase decides the rules don’t matter, and runs out, meeting Gert halfway. She flings her arms around him, and he does the same so they’re embraced in a hug that washes away all of his pain. They stay like that until Mrs. Yorkes says nearby, “Let’s go inside, kids.”

Chase pulls away but Gert doesn’t let him get far. She keeps their arms tucked together and makes him walk in at her pace. The whole time, she talks about how she’s felt sick.

“I got a fever yesterday,” he tells her, maybe trying to impress her even though it was only 99.9°.

She just nods solemnly and says, “Me too.”

They pause for a moment to say hi to their parents before Chase asks, “Can we go play in my room?”

“Are you feeling better, honey?” Mom asks. He nods, and she says, “If it’s okay with the Yorkes, go ahead.”

Mr. Yorkes smiles. “Yeah, sure. We’ll be down here if you need anything.”

“Okay,” he and Gert say at the same time, and then hurry to his room.

* * *

Stacey glances at Dale as the kids run upstairs. They’d decided ‘our kids are soulmates’ isn’t something you say over the phone, but in the flesh doesn’t seem any easier.

She fidgets with her fingers while Victor tells them about his newest invention.

Once he tapers off, she ventures, “So uh, have you thought about Chase’s soulmate any?”

Victor’s eyes narrow. “Why?”

Dale blurts, “Our neighbors’ kid found hers recently, and she’s not much older than Gert and Chase. Got us thinking, you know?”

“It did,” Stacey supports, “And Gert has been asking about h— them a lot ever since, Just wondering if it’s only us.”

“ — only us,” Dale says with her. “Has he been asking about it?”

“No,” Victor says slowly, “But it doesn’t matter anyway.  I haven’t taught him the ways of being a man yet. ”

“Oh,” Stacey blurts, “Are you — do you believe that the male soulmate has power over the female one?” It’s troubling to think about. The people who believe it are almost always abusive….

“Yes,” Victor says, and there’s pride in his voice. “But I’m not one of those people who abuse that power.”

“Wow, okay,” Dale says, laughing a little bit. Stacey blanches, though, because that’s… concerning?  No matter what Victor says, the mindset he has is toxic. Gert could get hurt.  Maybe...maybe they shouldn’t tell the Steins, then. Wow.

* * *

Gert doesn’t actually want to play. She’s still tired and sick, and playing doesn’t sound like fun.

“I don’t wanna play,” she says when they step in. He has some toys on the floor but everything else is pretty clean. “What else can we do?”

He looks around, eyes landing on his bed. “We can look at the stars on my walls?”

“What?”

“If we turn the lights off, we can see ‘em. They glow in the dark.”

“Okay!” She jumps up on his bed, and lays on her back. It feels nice to be flat, to relax. She closes her eyes as he turns the lights off and doesn’t open them up until she feels him lay next to her. There are lots of ‘em, on his ceiling and walls, bright spots of green light. “Wow….”

“I can’t have a nightlight so I got this instead,” he says, yawning.

She pokes him at the sound of the yawn, wanting to keep him awake. “Hey, don’t fall asleep.”

“I won’t.”

“We’re ‘mates, right?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“What are we gonna do?” Gert only asks ‘cause all the stories she’s heard are of older people. What are kids supposed to do?

Chase turns to his side, and she mimics him. “Be friends?”

“Don’t ‘mates get married?”

“Yeah, but we’re just kids.” He yawns again. “Le’s go to bed.”

Gert isn’t a big fan of naps anymore, but his bed is comfy and soft and the stars are super cool. Plus her headache is going away. “Okay.”

They agree to close their eyes at the same time, and when they do, Gert can’t help but giggle.

“Shh, Gert,” Chase whispers, laughing.

“I need a story, Chase,” she tells him. Most nights, she’s told a story before bed and it’s hard to fall asleep without one.

Chase sighs. Gert peeks her eyes open and sees him smiling. “Okay…. Once upon a time,” he starts.

* * *

Janet catches them one day, in the backyard. There’s a swing seat out there, big enough for two to sit on, and from where she peeks out the window, she catches them.

For a moment, it’s just Chase talking, then Gert nods her head. They lean in, and Janet witnesses what she’ll later find out is their first kiss. It feels weird to stare, to  _ spy _ , so she looks away quickly.

There’s nothing for her to do, really — no chores that aren’t taken care of by someone else — so she goes to read. 

It’s too hard to focus, she finds when she cracks open her book. All of her thoughts stray back to Chase and Gert, barely twelve and thirteen years old. They’ve been thick as thieves for almost eight years now, the best of friends. There’s been no indication of things progressing...like that. Chase has never said anything to her about a crush on anyone, least of all Gert.

She sits and stews for a long time, long enough that eventually Chase and Gert come inside, a wild sort of look in their eyes, and Gert needs a ride home. Janet obliges happily, and manages not to ask about it getting there or the ride back.

She also keeps it from Victor. He doesn’t need to know.

* * *

Chase creeps up behind Gert, eyes telling Nico, who she’s talking to, not to reveal him. Just at the right moment, he springs forward, wrapping his arms low around her waist. In her ear, he says, “Hey, Gert.”

She gasps so loud Chase might be concerned about it, and turns in his arms. She smacks the right one, not enough to hurt, then pulls him down for a kiss. He wants to deepen it, but with school all around them, he doesn’t. After a quick moment, he pulls away and presses their cheeks together.

With a laugh, she cradles the back of his head. Right by  _ his  _ ear, she asks, “What’s up?”

“Nothing, really,” he says, swaying them side to side gently. “Just missed you.”

“We just saw each other, like, an hour ago.”

“S’too long.”

“ Chase,” she laughs again, shaking her head a little so their cheeks bump into each other. Her laugh is beautiful, one of the best sounds he’s ever heard. He’s lucky that he’s in a position to make her laugh so often. “C’mon, stop being a caveman, it’s lunch time.”

He groans for show, pulls away enough to sling an arm over her shoulders. Nico scoffs at them, eyes soft, and leads the way to lunch. She tells them on the way, “You’re sickening.”

“That’s a compliment, now, isn’t it?” Chase asks, which is the start of a short bickering session over slang and the true meaning of ‘sickening’.

They sit together and wait for the others. Gert sits pressed right up next to him, and pretends not to notice. He notices though, and he looks down at where their hips are pressed side-by-side and  _ wants _ , he wants to hold her and be held but the thought is scary. They’ve been together awhile, and they’ve cuddled for sure, even done more, but he wants to be close,  _ comforted  _ in a different way. He wants to be bare and vulnerable with her; the realization that he wants her to  _ know  _ comes maybe ten years too late, hits him like a freight train.

It’s just that... _ no one _ knows. Just him, Mom, and Dad. Gert might suspect, might have some idea. But it’s been a while since Dad last punished him for something, he’s just too big now, too likely to defend himself. The point is, there’ve been less bruises and wounds for Gert to worry about, to press shaky fingers to. Less bruises and wounds for Chase to blame on lacrosse.

“Chase?” She asks, a hand on his knee and her face in front of his. He blinks, brought abruptly back to the moment. “You okay?”

He sighs, a short thing, and smiles. Nods. “Yeah. Yeah, baby, I’m fine.”

* * *

H e is so obviously not okay. 

Every once in a while, he looks at her like this, like there’s something he’s not saying, something important. His eyes are like saucers, wide and scared, and his cheeks pale considerably.

Once, Gert asked about it, when they were eight and nine, and Chase had said, “It’s — it’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” and then refused to talk about it again. It had upset her, which upset him, and by the time he had had to go home, they’d both been giving the other the silent treatment.

It lasted barely a day before things were back to rights. Gert never found out what upset him so much, but she’s catalogued all the times since he’s had the same look.

She won’t make him tell her. She will, however, wrap her arm low around his back, lean into him, smile up at him. That’s all cliche bullshit, what girls who only care about boys’ opinions do. But this is her boyfriend, her soulmate, and she’s gonna comfort him.

“Alright,” she says into his side, “But don’t call me baby.”

* * *

Chase goes home that afternoon, glad for the fact that there’s no lacrosse practice. Also, his Dad is somewhere in New York right now on business, so it should be a peaceful night.

(Chase is well aware he jinxed himself by thinking that.)

Things start to go downhill the second he walks in the door. Dad is sitting there on the couch, watching a show Chase vaguely recognizes. Mom sits next to him, not touching but not very far. They both look up when he enters, and the pressure of being under both of his parents’ spotlights makes his cheeks burn.

“H—hey,” he greets.

“Chase,” Dad says, voice deep and imposing as always. He sits forward, turns the volume all the way down. When he looks back at Chase, his eyes are hard. “We found out something interesting today.”

Chase swallows, setting his bag down. He steps away from it without coming into the living room, not wanting the contents to get ruined. “What’d you find out?”

Mom is staring at him. She looks —  _ hurt _ , sad. Her eyes are boring holes in the side of Chase’s head. He keeps eye contact with her as Dad stands up, hands on his hips.

“You and Gert,” he starts, and Chase’s heart jumps into his throat, “are soulmates. And you never bothered to tell us, your parents, this. Didn’t think it was important, did you?”

“Uh — “  _ Of course I did. I  _ do _. I just know what you think about soulmates. _

“Shut up, now!”

Chase’s mouth closes with an audible click.

Dad approaches him, and it takes everything in Chase not to back away. He circles Chase, appraising him. Finally he stops right in front of Chase, too close for comfort. Trying to look at him makes Chase’s eyes cross.

“You lied to us for a very, very long time, Chase.” His voice is low, rough as gravel. It makes shivers run up and down Chase’s spine. “You have to be punished.”

Dread fills Chase instantly, but it’s nothing compared to the fear when Dad picks up the lamp on the side table just behind him and swings it.

* * *

Gert’s doing homework — an essay on women in WW2 that she’s turned into a feminist ode to factory workers — when the doorbell rings.

Mom and Dad are downstairs, feeding the animals, so Gert gets up. She does it with a sigh, of course.

It takes a few moments to get to the door, long enough for the doorbell to ring again. “I’m coming!” She shouts, because holy shit, give her a second maybe?

She peeks out the peephole, and — much to her surprise — sees Chase standing there. She flings the door open, ready to ask what he’s doing here so late, but she never gets the chance to. Once the door is open, he’s stepping into her personal space, pulling her into a hug.

It’s — confusing. Chase is a tactile person sometimes, to the point where some days he wants to cuddle for as long as possible and others he can barely stomach handholding. Usually they don’t just hug like this. Chase usually accommodates for the height difference, and Gert cradles his head in her hands. This hug is just that — arms around each other, her face in his chest. He’s shaking.  _ That’s definitely new. _

“Chase?” She asks, a bolt of concern rushing through her. She tries to push away, to see his face, but he doesn’t let her. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” he grinds out, breathing like it hurts. “Please, just — I want to stay here tonight. Please.”

Gert doesn’t pause to think about Mom and Dad or what they’ll think. She knows, already, that they probably wouldn’t want Chase staying the night.  _ But whatever _ , she thinks,  _ Chase needs me. _

It’s obvious that something is wrong, no matter what he says. She sighs, leaning more into him. “Okay. Okay, come on. Do you have any clothes with you?”

“No,” he whispers.  “I don’t have anything.”

_ That’s...awesome _ , she thinks and she steps back, further into the house. Chase follows without disengaging, which is concerning but not the highest thing on the list, actually. “Alright, maybe my Dad will have something you can wear, and there’s a toothbrush in the guest bathroom — “

“I wanna stay with you,” he blurts, holding her closer. She rubs at his back with one hand, thinking about her options. Chase and her have shared the bed many times, more recently when they were home alone. When they were kids, though, they’d sleep in the same bed at any time, more than willing to cuddle and be close. Even after the first two weeks of symptoms. Mom and Dad will definitely not allow Chase to sleep in her bed, even knowing they’re soulmates and knowing they’ve already done things together.

Gert bites off a sigh, and lets go of Chase. “Lemme go,” she says, and when he doesn’t, she repeats, “Chase, I said to let me go.”

He steps back abruptly, arms suddenly crossed over his chest. Holding himself. The light is dim with consideration of how late it is, so she can’t really make out his face. He has a hood up over it, anyway, and his head is ducked down.

She reaches out, doesn’t force him, asks, “Can I see your hand?”

He gives her his left after a long moment, and lets her lead him to the guest bathroom. The lights there are fluorescent and reveal everything. Gert knows this all too well.

She directs him to sit on the closed lid of the toilet, which he does, and goes to pull off his hood before thinking better of it. “Can you take your hood off?”

“I don’t want you to see,” he tells her, but does it anyway. The first thing she notices is that his hair is matted with blood. There’s several cuts on his face, small but enough to hurt. His nose looks broken, and blood gushed out of it at some point, enough to leave a mess of it dried above and on his lips.

Gert gasps, a hand flying up to her mouth, and her eyes and voice are wet when she asks, “What the fuck happened?”

Chase stares at her, eyes hurt and wide and telling so much that Gert can’t read. He breathes in and out, shakily, and says, “My dad. He found out.”

“About what?” She snaps, anxiety curling around her windpipe. Chase must’ve killed someone or, or something! Something worse than that, enough to make Victor Stein do this!

Chase closes his eyes. He looks exhausted behind all the blood. “That we’re soulmates.”

She’d wondered why his parents didn’t know for approximately five minutes before it was explained to her, by her parents no less, that Victor Stein believed men should be in control of women, especially soulmate pairs. If he knew she’s Chase’s ‘mate, he’d expect Chase to control her. When she’d asked Chase about it, he’d held her by the biceps, said, “I can’t control you. I  _ won’t _ .”

G ert hadn’t asked again, didn’t think she needed to. But there’s something awful staring her in the face, and she can’t just let it go. She doesn’t know whether to get closer to him, or give him space, so she just stands there like an idiot. “Chase. Has this happened before?”

He swallows, nods, doesn’t open his eyes. 

“Okay. Okay, okay. Wow, um. Are you hurt anywhere else or just your head? And where’s all that blood coming from?”

He sits up, groans through his teeth as he begins to take off his jacket. “My chest, too.”

Gert finally moves into his space, helps him take the jacket and his shirt off, doesn’t oogle his chest even though she might want to. They have a first aid kit, and she uses it to clean up his face. Together, they search for a wound on his head, which, when she looks, is probably shallow enough to not need stitches. She asks what caused the long cut, and he tells her, “The base of a lamp.”

He tells her other things in bits and pieces as she puts a cream over his bruises meant to ease the pain. Apparently her parents told his, and his parents had flipped out. His dad had been much more angry than his mom, because he’d lied. He’d  _ lied  _ about not being Gert’s soulmate, and according to Victor Stein, nothing is as bad as that. (Or so Gert assumes.) Chase was promptly beaten with a lamp and fists and his Dad’s steel-toed boot. He’d only gotten away because his Dad had decided to stop, and left him right by the door.

He hadn’t known where else to go.

Gert stands up from the side of the tub, where she’d been sitting and leaning over his lap to get at his chest, and cups his cheeks. Makes him look at her, makes him see her. “Chase Stein, you will always have a place here. You can always come to me, with anything. Do you understand?”

He nods as much as he can in her grip, which she gentles as soon as she realizes what she’s doing.

Suddenly there are tears in her eyes, leftovers from earlier. No tears were shed then, but they are now. The height difference isn’t much better with Chase so low, but it doesn’t matter to her. She leans as far down as she has to to tuck their heads close. Cradling his head like she always has feels more important now than ever before. The tears come only when her face is hidden.

Chase hates it when Gert cries. She’s cried many times over their years together, because of hurt feelings and a broken arm and losing her favorite toy. He’s even made her cry before, in one of their arguments.

This has never happened, though, her crying for him. He doesn’t want her to, even though some twisted part of him relishes the feeling of being cared about. 

“No, no, don’t cry,” he tries, feeling his own eyes well up. “Please don’t cry.”

S he sniffles, muffles a sob. Chase has heard awful things, mostly from Dad to Mom, but this tops the list. It makes his heart twist and ache, and makes him do something admittedly stupid.

He holds onto her and stands. In his head, he imagined Gert wrapping her legs around his waist, but she doesn’t. She stands on her own two feet and cries into his chest instead. The whole thing makes his chest ache even more, pain pulsing lazily from seemingly every bit of his body, but he powers through it.

Chase knows very well where her bedroom is, and it’s easy to lead them there. Even with blurry vision and all the pain, he manages it. She takes over once they’re there, closing the door, helping him out of his pants and changing into her own pjs. There’s no question of asking her parents for clothes — nothing will happen tonight, except for holding each other. He doesn’t want her to leave him alone right now, anyway. He doesn’t want to leave this bed, and he doesn’t want to think about anything but what’s right in front of him. Gert, and all her love.

* * *

They talk for a while, get all the tears out. Gert kisses him several times, just pecks. They feel important, like he needs them.

He asks to hear about her day, and so she tells him, knowing fully well that he’ll be asleep by the end of it. It doesn’t make her mad, since he nine times out of ten listens — actually listens, and cares. She knows he doesn’t have the energy to this time. 

Gert cuddles him to sleep and talks until she’s positive he’s out. She settles in to sleep too, the late hour catching up to her, but anxiety and insomnia keep her awake.

She hears her parents padding around a little bit before they hit the hay, too. For an hour, Gert thinks about what could’ve made them tell Victor Stein, if they knew what was going on, if they cared. For an hour, Gert thinks about Victor Stein, the things he’s done to Chase, the fact that he’s going without punishment for it. For an hour, Gert plans what they’ll do, how she’ll convince her parents to listen to her, to let Chase stay.

She’ll go with him to get his stuff. She’ll help him set up the guest room, or find places in hers to put his belongings in. She’ll do anything and everything he needs, no matter what. He’s her soulmate and, she clenches her fist in the sheets, she’ll take on the world for him.

And when he wakes up at almost-five, eyes wild and shaking from a nightmare, she’s right there.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Gert is pretty...not-feminist here, especially that last bit, but I assume that she wouldn't mind having those feelings/doing those things for her soulmate, who absolutely reciprocates the feelings in full. I would love to write more in this verse and explore it more.
> 
> Speaking of uhhhhh leave a comment please, also take [this form](https://goo.gl/forms/Yw833EweKxtJnZ5W2) to help me decide what to write next for these dorks! It's super short, only two questions. Thanks!!


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